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I was in the same boat last year. We decided to rent and boy am I glad we did! We moved into a rental in the suburb everyone recommended to us but it just was not a good fit for us. We took our time and shopped around. We just recently moved into a beautiful home in a wonderful neighborhood and couldn't be happier!

I would get either a 6 months lease or a month to month, so you can familiarize yourself. You don't want to get stuck paying a mortgage on something in an area you wish you hadn't bought in, or keep wishing you'd bought in another area.

I actually would prefer to do a rent to own kinda like my old landlords use to do with their renters. You would rent from them for a yr and if you liked where you were living then they would give you an option to buy. They would also subtract the total payments you made the previous yr from renting from your house payments and then lower your monthly payments as well. So say if they were asking $60,000 and you paid a total of $7,200 while renting then you would only owe $52,800. Then instead of paying $600 a month you would pay like $500 a month or something like that.

It depends - if you have a relocation package with the company that hired you, sometimes you have no choice but to go ahead and buy. Also, if you know what school district you want to move into - why not go ahead and buy.